SILENT VOICES
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"Some men shot themselves to get out of Vietnam, now they do it, to get Vietnam out of them."
R.S. Kearney,1999

 

      

 

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Foreword

This book is a unique amalgam of painstakingly researched official history, personal accounts from the men who made the legend and insightful comparisons with modern warfare based on the author's considerable personal experience. The story of the men of The Fighting Tenth is told here as they would have it told; self-effacing, understated and matter of fact, but with an underlying theme of mateship, courage, determination, sacrifice and devotion to duty.

From its earliest days, the 10th Battalion was identified as showing extraordinary promise. At Morphettville on 4 September 1914, when the battalion was less than three weeks old, General Sir William Bridges, the commander of the 1st Division, said, 'I think they will uphold the reputation held by Corps from the mother country when the serious business of warfare has to be contended with.' The men of The Fighting Tenth did that and more. From Gallipoli, through Pozieres, Mouquet Farm, Gueudecourt, Hill 60, Flers, Le Barque and Bullecourt the battalion established an enviable reputation as a disciplined, courageous and outstanding unit. The subsequent operations under Lt Col Maurice Wilder-Neligan at Polygon Wood, Merris, Crepey Wood and Jeancourt were magnificently conducted and further added to the reputation of the battalion.

It was my honour to command the 10th, and subsequently, the 10th/27th Battalion from July 1986 to April 1990. During that time I was fortunate to meet some of the members of the original 10th Battalion and to share their experiences.

Their voices, and the voices of their mates, now silenced through the passage of time, call out from these pages. It is difficult to be a member of this battalion and certainly not possible to command this battalion without being acutely aware of the enormity of their legacy. I commend this book to anyone who would begin to understand the legend.

On behalf of all those who will read this work, I congratulate the author, Robert Kearney, on an outstanding achievement. He has captured the spirit of The Fighting Tenth and presented it here in an enthralling and eminently readable manner.

Neil Wilson
Major General AM RFD
Assistant Chief of the Defence Force Reserves
Head of Reserve Policy

 

Testimonial:
Dr Peter Stanley
Principal Historian, Australian War Memorial

Robert Kearney's Silent Voices, a new history of the 10th Battalion in the Great War, reminds us of one of the great battalions of the Australian Imperial Force.
Once upon a time most South Australians would have known of the 10th Battalion and its members' service on Gallipoli and the Western Front. Many would have known a member of this, South Australia's senior AIF battalion. Today, its service is known only to those with family connections with it.

Almost 9,000 men passed through the battalion and over one in ten - 1015 - died in its ranks. The 10th landed on the Gallipoli peninsula at dawn on 25 April and continued to fight through the Great War, at Pozieres, Bullecourt, Ypres and in the great battles of 1918, finally seeing its last action in the attack on Jeancourt, in the Hindenburg Line, in September 1918.

Robert Kearney, himself a veteran of the Vietnam war, has taken the trouble to locate and draw on the letters, diaries and memoirs of men of the battalion, and has combined them with a meticulous trawl of the surviving official records to produce a new history of the battalion, complementing Cecil Lock's 1936 The Fighting 10th. He generally lets the sources speak for themselves, allowing us to hear the hitherto Silent Voices of the AIF in their own words. Kearney has performed a particular service by dissecting in detail the events of 9 October 1917, the contentious raid on Celtic Wood. His original research on this fierce and costly action contribute new evidence and valuable fresh insights.

Silent Voices is a notable contribution to understanding of South Australia's distinctive contribution to Australia's military history.

Dr Peter Stanley
Principal Historian, Australian War Memorial

 
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